Yesterday was fabulous. That's all you really need to know.
Ok fine, I'll give you more than that. First of all, I got to sleep in, if you can really count 8 as sleeping in. We had plans to go to Windsor Castle at 11 and there wasn't a whole lot I could do before then, so I just let myself relax a little bit that morning, which was great. So then at 11ish, like half our group left for Windsor Castle. I didn't know a lot about Windsor, but I didn't have any other plans and the program was willing to reimburse us traveling fees and entrance fees so I figured why not go. One of the best decisions I'd say. We had to take the train there, but it wasn't a very long ride, about 30 min. When we walked out of the train station, the castle was literally right there in front of us. And it was giant. And beautiful. I fell in love immediately. First of all, this is a legit castle. Remember that post a while ago about castles here not really being castles? This was a real castle. In case you weren't already aware, the Queen still takes residence in Windsor. I believe it is actually one of her favorite places, which is easy to see why. Hopefully you'll be able to see how amazing it is from my little blog post. So the castle is giant sized. I think it's bigger than Buckingham. And it's spread out on a vast amount of land. So basically I was in awe the moment I saw it. To add to the greatness of this experience, it was a beautiful day outside and the whole town is super cute and the land is super pretty.
Ok, so I suppose I'll actually explain to you what the inside is like to. As I said earlier, the castle is spread out, it's not just one building. So we walked into the square type thing and the first building we visited was St. George's Chapel. I really liked this chapel but I think that was partially due to the face that the audio guide was pretty spectacular. It gave cool information and it also reminded us that the chapel is an actual place of worship, which I don't feel like many of the other chapels have emphasized. They've all just been more of tourist attractions, which is kind of sad. It was a really pretty chapel, but I also felt like it was a little less ornate than some of the others we've seen and I prefer the simplicity. Once we got to the choir area of the chapel, we were looking around and then BAM. There's King Henry VIII's grave. In my head I was screaming "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!" all excitedly. How freaking cool is that? And Jane Seymour, his 3rd wife was buried in the same place, along with one of Anne Boleyn's babies. It was amazing and I was so mad we couldn't take pictures. So we keep on walking along and there are a bunch of royal people graves there. It was so cool. But I was most excited about King Henry VIII. Even though he was one bad dude, he is so fascinating. It was pretty funny though because we were in the gift shop later and there was this English lady talking about the grave and she was like "I was so happy to walk over Henry VIII's grave!" But us American freaks walked around is as though it was some sort of sacred ground or something.
After checking out the chapel, we went to the State Apartments. First we walked through this room that had Queen Mary's Dolls' House in it. This is an actual doll house, except its more of a doll Buckingham Palace rather than a house. It was a present and it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. First of all it has plumbing and toilet paper. Second the plates are made of real silver. And third the paintings are identical replicas by real artists. I wish my Barbie's had a house like that...After we went through the room with the Dolls' House we entered the State Apartments. It was amazing but I'm just going to go through some highlights. They had the bullet that killed Lord Admiral Nelson, who is one of Britain's great hero's. Pretty sweet. You know what. I just can't even really explain much more than that. I walked the rooms where the Queen lives. That's about all the description you need because basically that is freaking cool. One of my favorite places for sure.
Once we got back from the castle, we hurried and ate some dinner and ran to Her Majesty's Theater where we lucked out and got cheap tickets to Phantom of the Opera. IT WAS SO AMAZING!! Literally, all of my wildest dreams came true watching it. I loved it more than I can express. Except the chandelier dropping was kind of a disappointment. It wasn't spectacular at all and that was one of the parts I was most excited about. Very sad but the rest of it was amazing so I'll just pretend they had a spectacular chandelier dropping.
Basically it was one of the best days of my life. As is almost every other day I've been here in London...
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